FABIO2 - 2009-02-05 More than the number of already taxable jobs in the tobacco industry that would either be lost or simply converted over to joint production?

It's not like people burn through weed like they do cigarettes. A single plant would last them months. Do you charge them hundreds of dollars for that plant like growers do? No, because anyone with a backyard could cultivate the things.

Look I hate the drug war as much as anyone, but arguing that one of the benefits of legalization is that it's going to create BOOMING JOBS is pretty tenuous.

Syd Midnight - 2009-02-05 BOOMING JOBS, no, but perhaps enough to swing some representatives, especially in areas hit hard by tobacco restrictions. Tobacco companies have had contingency plans to start with weed since the early 70s when it first looked likely to be legalized.

La Loco - 2009-02-05 Making it legal would take away America's strongest work force, people incarcerated for non violent crimes.

seriously, though, the reason weed will never be legal is right there at the top of this thread. every single poster on this site could cultivate their own little weed plant and grow their own dope, no need for a middle-man. To make it taxable you'd need to set up a revenue system like for moonshining, all dour men in fedoras smashing pot plants with sledgehammers and shit, which kind of defeats the fucking point.

The best you can do here is remove the penalties for personal-use possession, and then treat intoxication like alcohol - you get popped driving while high, you go to jail, same as now but you don't get popped for the weed itself.

HURF BLURF DUH - 2009-02-05 Are you serious? Do you really think stoners would go to the trouble of growing plants and shit if they could go to the liquor store and buy a pack of joints, joints of good, regulated, professionally grown pot, for or whatever? You've never hung around stoners much, have you?

fatatty - 2009-02-05 Yeah I gotta go with HURF here. People COULD grow their own plants, but that takes work. I guarantee that an industry would grow out of recreation weed legalization. Plus professionals will be able to create better blends than stoners trying it in their backyard by throwing seeds into the air.

What would really suck away jobs from other industries though would be hemp. As Rodents says below, industrial hemp has about a million uses from textile to fuel to food to building material to paper to plastics to paints and even leaves soil better than before it was planted, plus it can be grown in every state.

It seems to be a miracle plant but we'll never know because it's potential was crushed in the 30's right before it was about to take off.

This is the main reason that pot is illegal after various industries (mostly Hearst, Dupont and Mellon) decided that hemp would destroy their empires.

Just google it and I guarantee you won't not be pissed.

Rodents of Unusual Size - 2009-02-05 The thing that actually bothers me most about it is industrial hemp has to be one of the most useful plants on the planet and yet it is prohibited in all but two states. You can literally make 4 to 5 times the amount of paper with hemp than you can with trees. You can make clothing, shoes, food from the seeds, you can make SO MUCH SHIT FROM IT and it literally can grow anywhere without a lot of water and multiple crops a year because it grows fast.

And yet, it remains illegal mostly everywhere and dog teams are used to find and destroy it if it is growing naturally. It's wasteful, and doesn't make sense. Hemp can't even intoxicate you.